Govt rapped for lacking seriousness in tackling varsity decline

Harakahdaily

Oct 12:  Expressing its disappointment over local varsities' failure to be ranked in the Times Higher Education's top universities, PAS Youth said the government lacked seriousness in arresting the decline in Malaysia's higher education sector. No Malaysian varsities made it among the top 400 universities in the world as decided by THE, and fell behind Asian countries such as Hong Kong, Japan, China, Singapore and Thailand.In his reaction, Higher Education minister Khaled Nordin said local varsities were still ‘new’ and as such would take another seven to eight years before they could compete in the THE rankings. However, PAS Youth's information chief Riduan Mohd Nor accused the government of not being serious "to raise the standard of local universities to the level of the best universities in the world." "With such great technology and stability in our economy, local universities should be able to compete with the best universities at least in Asia or in neighbouring countries,” he added. Riduan also took Khaled to task for blaming local universities of not being involved in impactful researches, saying that instead the government should strive to provide the infrastructure to encourage high level researches at university level. He warned that local universities may lose their status as destination of choice for international students, and prompt Malaysian students to go abroad for further studies, only to remain there.